Harry and the Arachnid
by Healer Pomfrey
Summary: Harry has a strange dream - or was it real? Maybe his best friend, one of the spiders in his cupboard, knows more... Set in the summer before Harry's first Hogwarts year. Completely AU, partly OOC.


**Harry and the Arachnid  
><strong>**by Healer Pomfrey**

_All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.  
><em>_I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes._

_**This story is dedicated to Faye – Happy (belated) Birthday!**_

* * *

><p>Harry eagerly listened as the man told him about a school, where young wizards and witches were learning how to use magic. '<em>This is so cool. Magic really exists. Uncle Vernon was wrong<em>,' he thought and became very excited when the man promised that he would be going to attend that school too in a few weeks' time.

"Am I a wizard, sir?" he asked, hesitantly, wondering, '_Am I not a freak?_'

However, there was no reply, and when he looked at the spot on the edge of his mattress, which the man had occupied earlier, he noticed in great disappointment that his visitor was gone.

'_It was only a dream_,' he realised, suddenly feeling very sad. However, to his surprise he noticed that he was feeling much better than before. When he had gone to bed the previous evening, he had been suffering from a bad cold, but now he felt completely fine. '_The man in my dream made me feel better_,' he remembered. '_He gave me some medicine. Maybe it is always him, who makes everything go away overnight, while it takes Dudley much longer to recover? But how could he have helped me if it only was a dream?_' He turned his eyes to the wall. A black spider was sitting nearby.

"Did you see if a man was here earlier?" Harry whispered. He was used to talking to the spiders that normally were his only company in the small cupboard. Sometimes, they talked back, but not all of them were able to communicate with him. '_This is the one that can speak_,' he thought, smiling when the spider replied in a soft voice.

"I believe there was someone," it told him. "But..."

Harry could not hear what the spider said next, because his aunt chose that instant to hammer at his door. "Get up, lazybones. Make breakfast. Quickly!"

_ 30 hours earlier ~_

Petunia Dursley sighed in exasperation as she observed her husband throw dozens of letters into the fireplace.

'_Hogwarts won't stop trying to contact Harry_,' she thought, '_and Vernon won't take it well if they send even more letters. Maybe I should ask Severus for help. He was Lily's best friend apart from that horrible Potter_.'

From her sister's time at Hogwarts, she was well acquainted with the magical way of communication. In the morning, when Vernon had gone to work and Dudley and Harry to school, she took a pen and wrote a note on a piece of paper.

'_Severus,  
><em>_Hundreds of owls from Hogwarts are pestering my family. Could you please contact the school and ask them to stop this or take the boy away from here? Thanks in advance.  
><em>_Yours sincerely  
><em>_Petunia Dursley'_

Hastily glancing around to confirm that none of her curious neighbours was watching her, she approached one of the owls that were resting on top of the garage and fastened the letter to its foot, instructing the bird "Take this to Severus Snape."

Observing how the bird obediently took into the air, she contentedly returned home.

_~ At the same time at Hogwarts ~_

Severus Snape sighed as he placed the potion, which he was just brewing, under a stasis charm. '_Why do we have to take lunch in the Great Hall today?_' he thought, annoyed. '_Albus should know that I don't have time for unnecessary chit-chat_.'

Throwing on his black robes, Severus strode through the soothingly deserted halls of the old castle. He graciously took his seat between his colleagues, acknowledging their presence with a short nod.

"How nice of you to join us on this fine summer day," the Headmaster greeted him, and his baby blue eyes were twinkling merrily. "Does any of you know," he then addressed the four Heads of House, Hagrid and Madam Pomfrey, who were the only staff members currently present in the castle, "where the school owls are? When I visited the owlery this morning, it was completely empty."

'_As if the meddling old coot was not fully aware of everything that is happening within Hogwarts_,' Severus thought in amusement, quirking an eyebrow in silent question.

However, the answer literally swept down from the sky in form of one of the missing school owls that chose that instant to deliver Petunia's letter to the Potions Master. Severus read the note without allowing any emotion to show on his face. He calmly folded the paper and slid it into his robe pocket, before he let out a small sigh and excused himself, pointing out the long list of potions that Madam Pomfrey required.

Back in the solace of his private quarters, he pulled out a chain from under his robes and gripped the small pendant in form of an arachnid with his right hand.

'_Why did I make you when the old coot placed Lily's son with Petunia?_' he thought to his copy that was residing in the Dursleys' residence in form of Severus' Animagus form, a black spider. '_I know that I instructed you not to tell the boy anything about our world as long as the Dursleys wouldn't, but you must at least lay your hands on one of these letters and make the boy sign it_.'

Twenty-four hours later, the Headmaster informed his colleagues that the school owls had returned to Hogwarts during the night, and Professor McGonagall was enthusiastic about finally having received Harry Potter's reply to the Hogwarts invitation letter.

'_On August 31, you will take the boy to Diagon Alley to buy his school supplies_,' Severus instructed his copy, before he wrote his reply to Petunia.

_~ A month later at the Dursleys' residence ~_

Harry was just cleaning up from the Dursleys' breakfast, when the door bell rang, and Aunt Petunia ordered him to open the door.

A very tall man in black trousers and a black turtleneck shirt was standing in front of the door. "Mr. Potter," the man greeted him in a soft voice, which sounded strangely familiar to Harry's ears. "Today, we are going to buy your school supplies."

'_It's the man from my dream_,' Harry realised, staring at the man with a mixture of delight and disbelief. "Are you real, sir?" he blurted out, feeling stupid as soon as the words had left his mouth. During the last four weeks, his thoughts had frequently revolved about the wizarding school, about which he had been told in his dream.

To his enormous relief and delight, he realised that the man was indeed alive and a wizard, just like himself. Together, the two wizards travelled to Diagon Alley, and Harry enjoyed himself more than ever before. The man was not very communicative; however, he told Harry everything he had to know about Hogwarts. In the afternoon, he apparated Harry back to Little Whinging, promising to take him to King's Cross in the morning.

Harry happily hurried back into his cupboard to tell his best friend all about the new school. '_Maybe I can take him with me_,' he mused as he searched his cupboard for the black spider. However, the spider was nowhere to be seen. Only when Harry returned after dinner was the arachnid sitting on the wall as usual.

_~ Fifteen hours later ~_

The spider observed the Hogwarts Express pull out of the station, pondering if he should return to the small cupboard in the Dursleys' residence but quickly dismissed the thought. When all of the fawning parents had retired from the platform, he finally changed back into his human form and apparated away. Arriving at his ancestor's manor, he fingered for the chain with the pendant of the arachnid.

'_Severus,_' he thought to his real body. '_Even if I'm only a copy, I'm not going to spend ten months in that cupboard waiting for the boy. While he is at Hogwarts, I will reside at Prince Manor, where I can live in my human form and have a fully equipped potions lab. Be nice to the child. He looks like his father, but he is just like Lily. He is adorable, and he is going to be a good friend and ally. Mind my words_.'

'_Do whatever you please, while the boy is at Hogwarts, but leave me in peace. I only made you to look after him according to the promise I made to Lily. I never told you to befriend him_,' Severus thought back a few hours later, when Harry Potter smiled at him, happily waving a hand as he walked by the Head table for his Sorting. His annoyance at his copy was only topped when the Sorting Head shouted into the Hall, "Slytherin."

**THE END**


End file.
